How to Draw Facial Expressions (Part 2)

It's surprising how often anime and manga characters talk with their eyes closed... ^_^ I wonder how many people actually talk like that...? Anyway, closed eyes can express a variety of emotions. Here, they express impatience or annoyance, but they can also express calmness, happiness, or smugness. Flip the eyes around and have them curve upwards, and they can express extreme sadness, as well as excitement. For this particular picture, I made the eyebrows angle downwards and drew the mouth open. Notice how I drew the upper left lip slightly raised; this helps whatever emotion you are trying to convey seem more negative, whether you are drawing anger, unhappiness, or impatience. ^_^

Happiness is one of the most common emotions you see with pictures of anime and manga characters. Excessive happiness or excitement can be expressed by large eyes, highly arched eyebrows, and a big smiling mouth. Other features such as extra shinies in the eyes and the upward curving of the lower eyelid are also common. On a side note, more kawaii characters tend to have huge eyes, and small noses and mouths (unless their mouth is open, as in this picture).

This character is happy, as well, but not to the extent as in the previous example. The emotion is much more subtle. Notice that the eyebrows have been lowered (though they still arch slightly) and the curve of the mouth is very slight. The lower eyelids are arched, though, and the irises are still pretty large, so though the character's contentment is not as obvious, it is still clear he's in a good mood. ^_^

To express surprise or shock, enlarge the eyes and make the pupils smaller. This is particularly apparent in anime and manga face faults, when a character is so suprised that his/her eyes become almost as large as the rest of the face... ^_^ In this particular example, the mouth is drawn really small, but other sizes will work too.

This guy isn't particularly exciting; he just looks irritated. The irises are small, the eyebrows are arched down, and the mouth is small and slightly off center. I can't think of much else to say for this one... ^_^